04/05/2009

Outlook's Ukrainian journey

For Ukrainians, Victory Day at the end of this week, celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, exposes old divisions between nationalists and those who regret the demise of the Soviet Union.

Gabriel Gatehouse, the BBC's Kiev correspondent, explores what unites and divides Ukrainians in an east-west journey he made for Outlook earlier this year. His route loosely follows one of the pipelines that transports Russian gas to the European Union.

He sets off from the once mighty factory city of Kharkov near the Russian border in the east, then passes through increasingly deserted villages in the Ukrainian countryside. In western Ukraine, he experiences café society in Lviv before reaching the Slovakian border, where the gas pipeline crosses into the EU.

It's a journey of discovery, as Ukrainians of all walks of life talk to him about their country's future and share very different attitudes to their common past.